An underground psychedelic rock band from Tokyo is ready to make its presence known in America and worldwide. The dreamy guitars of Tō Yō’s new single “Twin Mountains” are here from the upcoming release of their debut concept album, Stray Birds From the Far East. They have traveled from The Land of The Rising Sun to your speakers, and here’s a first listen of the new song below:
Like the single, the album is a pop-infused psych/acid rock epic about nostalgia for a place yet to be discovered. This concept very much reminds of another Japanese artist I love dearly, the novelist Haruki Murakami, and the epic, surreal books he’s written like Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84. Maybe this yearning for places undiscovered in both Tō Yō’s music and Murakami’s novels are related in some way.
Stray Birds From the Far East will be released via King Volume Records on August 18, 2023, and this is something psychedelic fans everywhere will want to get their hands on. The Tō Yō sound is simultaneously unique yet familiar – and deeply moving. You may feel a bit of deja vu as you listen to the violent but, at times, naive and carefree psychedelic sound from the single, “Twin Mountains.”
Vocalist and guitarist Masami Makinom said this about the new single: “This track represents a fantasy landscape. But who saw this landscape? When you feel that it is not your memory, it is the echo of the voice of the childhood memories that someone has left to the wind. The more we want to entrust our body and soul to it, the more we feel the weight of our body. This beautiful and sad lament will also reach someone somewhere as an echo. This work expresses the transience of all things in transition. Another mountain is hidden behind what appears to be one, and they appear to be twins, and it seems to go on and on. This track is based on the memory of the Japanese landscape.”
Indeed, Masami speaks of the poetry of “Twin Mountains” and the larger vision of the upcoming album. With each flouish of guitar, each dash of mind-bending color, sound, and melody, Tō Yō blasts from outward from within our collective consciousness with raw and unfettered energy. “We believe our sound is meant to awaken the most primitive sense to sublimate the rise of the soul and its uncontrollable impulses,” Masami continues.
Tō Yō is an ambitious band with a grand vision, so it’s no surprise some of their biggest influences are groundbreaking bands, including Japanese rock heroes Flower Travellin’ Band, Kikagaku Moyo, Ali Farka Touré, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin.
Tō Yō describes itself as a jam band, so hashing out their songs in the studio was a necessity. But it also proved a strategic benefit, as working with engineer Yui Kimijima at Tsubame Studio in Tokyo (the mecca for today’s Japanese psych rock) helped the band take their sound to the next level.
“Yui is not sparing in his experimentation,” Makinom says. “In fact, the studio has a wonderful atmosphere that inspires the imagination, with instruments that we had never touched, and things that were originally used for other purposes but can function as instruments.” For example, Makinom says that in the track “Tears of the Sun,” the glittering steel popping sound in the second half is the sound of a tarai, a tin tub.
With this debut album, Tō Yō embarks on an ambitious journey of experimentation and musical risks, leading to a colorful and often unpredictable sonic tapestry that’s pleasing at every turn. While listening to the record, you’ll hear the myriad influences of the band, like the heroics of indie darlings Built to Spill, the shimmering charm of My Morning Jacket, the spirit of surf rock, and the wild, frenetic sounds of the psychedelic pioneers of the Seventies and Sixties.
Mark your calendars for Stray Birds From the Far East by Tō Yō, set to be released on August 18, 2023, via King Volume Records. The album will be co-released with Kozmik Artifacts for EU customers. The quartet comprises Makino (vocals, guitar), Sebun (guitar), Vincent (bass), and Hibiki Amano (drums, percussion). I’ve listened to the rest of the album, and it has just about everything a modern psych-rock fan could want – from the tasty hooks of neo-psychedelia to the tight musicianship to the acid, sun-drenched pop we all love. Tō Yō has arrived to the underground psychedelic rock scene in grand fashion, and we can only thank them for these new sonic delights.
Support Tō Yō and pre-order the album by finding them on Bandcamp or social media (Instagram).
Support King Volume by finding them on Bandcamp, its official website, or social media (Instagram, Facebook).
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